No more teens on Facebook?

“Pst, did you hear? Word on the street is that Facebook is going downhill. People are deactivating left and right… It has turned into this hive of stalkers and losers that seem to get off on trolling and ruining other people’s lives… Join the cause, dude! Facebook is gonna be the next Friendster.” Okay, the aforementioned statement is pretty much a much exaggerated scene of what happens to be extracted from a person with a hyperactive imagination and needs to set some facts straight unless you want a case of libel or slander. So are there no more teens on Facebook?

No, Facebook is not going to be the next Friendster.

However, there is a kernel of truth that can be taken from this over-the-top statement. In fact, one could say that this social media giant has been experiencing a serious decline in popularity as shown by the influx of people opting to leave and deactivate their Facebook accounts.

That’s right folks, Facebook is not as cool or hip as it used to be.

“Oh, those are just old folks who can’t get the hang of it. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, they always say.”

Wrong.

It should be clarified or rather, specified that this certain group of people who are leaving the comforts of Facebook are in fact teens. You read that right, according to the study done by iStrategyLabs in 2014, the youths of today with ages ranging from 13 to 17 in the US are flying the social media coop which caused Facebook a 6% drop.

“Oh, come on. It’s just a measly six percent! That can’t really mean much, could it?”

This is where things get a bit iffy. In a layman’s point of view, this is just a small easily recoverable percentage. But if we are talking about the big boys, this ‘measly’ six percent could amount to a larger loss than it appears.

Try and think of millions.

Yes, the possible loss is that big. But hey, this is only an estimate, maybe they really didn’t lose much after all. No one can really say how much was lost except for the people concerned. But back to the issue at hand, Facebook as a social media site is not getting much of the audience and reach it used to have.

“Okay, so it’s not as popular as it used to be. It’s a fad. What comes up, must come down.”

Well, not exactly. As mentioned before, six percent may or may not be that much of a deal but here’s the thing, unlike Facebook, its competitors like Twitter and Pintrest are experiencing the exact opposite.

Yeah, this is pretty much a very hard blow to the gut where Facebook’s concerned.

In fact, in using the same age group, it was noted Twitter had a 2% increase of social media users, from 46% at 2013 to 48% at 2014. Pintrest also garnered a raving response of 40% in a survey asking if it was safe and trustworthy as well as it being enjoyable. Facebook not only got a decrease of users but just got 9% of its users claiming that it is a safe and trustworthy site, most even said that Facebook is not as fun as it used to be.

“Whoa, so it Facebook gonna go poor or something?”

No, it’s not. There is a silver lining to this rather grim story. I’m sure you are all familiar with Instagram and Whatsapp. These are one of the most popular apps to date and shows no sign of decline as of yet. Why am I talking about these two? Well, some of you may not know this but the Facebook Corporation owns these two apps and as of now, unlike their social media site, a large influx of teens is gravitating to these two apps.

So if you think about it, these two pretty much help compensate for the loss of popularity as well as income.